Some Summit County welfare recipients are coming face-to-face with the fact that their time on public assistance is running out.
About 1,000 welfare recipients who have used more than half of their 36-month quota of benefits without receiving job training or finding a job are being prodded to do one or the other, thanks to a county program that sent welfare case workers into the streets to track their clients down.
Daisy Alford-Smith, director of Summit County Department of Human Services, said the agency was prompted to hit the streets after it looked at the participation rate among welfare recipients in employment and job-training programs.
'It wasn't good,' Ms. Alford-Smith said. 'Calls and letters to some of those who had (been on welfare) 18 months or more obviously weren't getting any response, so I decided we needed face-to-face contact. We have a commitment to help them if we can, and their time is running out.'
The state and federal welfare reforms of 1996 limited welfare recipients to 36 months of benefits, and mandated that they had to work part-time or train for a job to continue to receive them. Summit County has more than 5,000 welfare recipients.
Ms. Alford-Smith said 100 case workers were dispatched in May throughout the community to find the unresponsive clients, explain their options in person, and acquaint them with the urgency of their situation.
Of the 1,051 recipients located, 54 immediately said they wanted no further contact with the welfare agency for unspecified reasons; 166 were found to be exempt from the 36-month rule because they were caring for an infant child; about 150 were already working, either full- or part-time, and either deliberately or mistakenly had not informed the welfare agency; and about 50 had moved and left no forwarding address. The rest are being enrolled in one or more of the county's welfare-to-work programs.
Summit is one of the first counties in the state to try the face-to-face approach to contacting unresponsive cli
ents, but it is an idea that has found favor to the north in Cuyahoga County, where about 20% of the state's welfare population lives.
Ralph Johnson, general manager of Cuyahoga Work and Training, the county's main welfare agency, said next month he will contract with local social service groups to make face-to-face contact with an estimated 3,000 welfare recipients who are close to exhausting their benefits and have not yet participated in training programs. A budget for the project has yet to be set.
'We decided not to have our case workers do it, since we have such a large number of non-participating clients,' Mr. Johnson said. 'But we think that something has to be done to find these people and find out what is happening and why they haven't participated.'
In Summit County, the county's neighborhood-canvassing case workers found out some of the reasons.
'Some of them still didn't know about the time limits,' said Katherine Powers, a Summit County case worker. 'Or they thought they really wouldn't be enforced, or that they were exempt. Most were honest and told us they had jobs. Others couldn't believe we actually came out to get them and were thankful.'
However, some were not as truthful. Ms. Alford-Smith said when case workers went to find one welfare client, they discovered he lived over a garage, where he was doing business fixing cars.
'He wasn't too happy to see us,' she said. 'With the small number of cases like that, we are trying to determine how long they have been taking the benefits without telling us (they were working). It could be fraud.'
Delbert Dyer, another case worker, said walking the streets not only was helpful for the welfare clients, but for the social workers, too.
'It made it easier for us in a way because we are so used to having them come to us for the services, and now we have seen where they live and what their circumstances are,' Mr. Dyer said. 'They know they have to participate now, and they know that we care enough to go get them.'
Like Ms. Alford-Smith, Mr. Johnson has concluded that the counties have a duty to try to reach their most unresponsive clients.
'It's really the only way to do it,' Mr. Johnson said. 'We are just beginning to reach out.'